Arsenal parked the bus to frustrate one-dimensional Chelsea

Arsenal parked the bus to frustrate one-dimensional Chelsea during a 0-0 draw in the Premier League on Sunday.

Boring, bland, balking, bus-parking and beautiful. Arsenal were all those things during their 0-0 draw away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the Premier League on Sunday.

The Gunners went to the home of the champions and set themselves up to play spoilers. In fact, manager Arsene Wenger practically parked the team bus on the Blues’ pitch.

Wenger going against the grain meant the end of Chelsea’s lengthy scoring run at the Bridge under Antonio Conte, per OptaJoe:

To put the significance of Arsenal’s clean sheet into context, Squawka Football showed how long it’s been since Wenger’s side blanked the Blues:

Don’t underestimate the significance of this result and how Arsenal achieved it.

Wenger’s players were disciplined, cagey, pragmatic and cynical. In other words, none of the things usually associated with Arsenal in games away to the top six.

Arsenal’s last away trip was the 4-0 horror show against Liverpool at Anfield. Wenger was clearly still haunted by lingering memories of the nightmare when his team arrived at Stamford Bridge.

While the Gunners were wide open against Liverpool, they were tight and stingy against Chelsea. Wenger’s bus-parking blueprint was drawn up to focus on three areas.

The first was to establish and maintain a clear defensive shape. Wenger stuck with a 3-4-3 shape to achieve this, despite the formation’s mixed results this season.

It helped Wenger had his preferred back three in place. Nacho Monreal and skipper Laurent Koscielny bracketed Shkodran Mustafi in a three-man defense.

The group performed above expectations, but this game was more about the protection they received.

Said protection came from Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey, a midfield double act different in personality than the one bypassed and overrun at Anfield.

Rather than remain split wide apart, or pushed up too high, Ramsey and Xhaka mostly stayed deep. They resisted too many forays forward in favour of holding their positions at the base of midfield and in front of Arsenal’s back three.

Two midfielders afflicted with a damaging case of wanderlust at Anfield rarely ignored their remit to maintain the Gunners’ secure base. Like the back three, Arsenal’s midfield two also received some help.

Their help came from wide forwards Danny Welbeck and Alex Iwobi. The latter was drafted in late to replace the injured Mesut Ozil. Iwobi didn’t disappoint, as he showed greater work rate and more discipline than Ozil has in four years at the club.

Iwobi and Welbeck played more like inverted wingers. They routinely tucked into central midfield to flank and support Xhaka and Ramsey.

The movement of Iwobi and Welbeck gave Arsenal a natural block of four in the middle off the ball. In possession, this quartet allowed the Gunners to string together some lengthy series of passes to frustrate Chelsea’s players and supporters.

It was a similar story at the back. Wing-backs Sead Kolasinac and Nacho Monreal tucked in to make a back five out of possession. Going forward, the pair pushed high to offer natural width and test the defensive skills of Chelsea wing-backs Marcos Alonso and Victor Moses.

This was proactive defending at its finest. Arsenal were nullifying two of Chelsea’s most consistent attacking outlets by denying them opportunities to get forward.

Arsenal’s five at the back and bank of four in midfield gave the away side a definite structure from which to defend and build attacks.

Those shapes also helped establish the second key part of Wenger’s plan. Namely, to create numbers advantages in every area of the pitch.

Iwobi and Welbeck tucking in meant Arsenal outnumbered Chelsea duo Cesc Fabregas and N’Golo Kante in central areas. Neither managed to exert much influence on the match.

Defensively, Arsenal’s back five left no room in behind for Chelsea’s front three of Alvaro Morata, Pedro and Willian.

Those advantages in numbers also worked for the Gunners whenever they broke forward.

Welbeck and Iwobi tucking in to make a midfield four meant Arsenal always had a man spare to receive a pass or make a late run in behind. Ramsey, who was outstanding on the day, had two excellent scoring chances after being given free runs into the box as Fabregas and Kante struggled to cope.

Since Pedro and Willian were often drawn inside by Iwobi and Welbeck, Morata and Moses had no help against Arsenal wing-backs Hector Bellerin and Sead Kolasinac. Both caused Chelsea problems in support of striker Alexandre Lacazette.

Kolasinac fired in a vicious low cross-shot almost leading to a tap-in for Lacazette. Bellerin teased a terrific cross onto the head of Welbeck, who should have done better.

Arsenal grew in confidence on the ball only after frustrating Chelsea and forcing the hosts to run out of ideas. The Blues’ frustration came from how effectively Arsenal maintained their 5-4-1 shape off the ball.

Arsenal stayed structured and compact thanks to a selective use of pressing. It was most obvious up front, where the Gunners were content to let Chelsea’s back three have time on the ball.

Arsenal didn’t press defenders in possession and leave astute distributors such as David Luiz and Cesar Azpilicueta easy passing lanes to Kante and Fabregas.

Instead, the Gunners sat off the Chelsea defence and forced the Blues to play through numbers. The best example of the tactic’s effectiveness came when centre-back Gary Cahill saw no openings in front, so turned and launched a long pass all the way across to Azpilicueta.

Despite having time, the Spaniard also saw no obvious pass forward and simply chested the ball back to goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois under no pressure. The moment summed up Chelsea’s lack of ideas for breaking down Arsenal’s defensive block.

Next: Chelsea vs. Arsenal combined XI

Forcing Courtois to regularly kick it long to an isolated Morata made the Blues predictable and easy to deal with. It didn’t help Chelsea that Morata so often lost the physical battles against Arsenal’s back three, per Simon Johnson of the London Evening Standard:

"The Spain international has got off to a good start to his Chelsea career and showed plenty of promising touches this afternoon too. However, there were too many periods where Arsenal’s defenders were outmuscling Chelsea’s centre-forward and not the other way around.It means Chelsea aren’t quite as intimidating to their London rivals, which perhaps partly explains why they grew more in confidence as the game went on."

Morata struggling only compounded Chelsea’s inability to break the Gunners down. It was telling how often Conte changed his shape.

First, he introduced Tiemoue Bakayoko for Pedro and went to a more traditional 3-5-2. Then the introduction of Eden Hazard prompted another switch, according to ESPN FC’s Michael Cox:

"The hosts were now in a 3-5-1-1, with Hazard finding space between the lines in a No. 10 position and Fabregas, significantly, moving into his third position of the day as a quarterback behind Kante and Bakayoko, essentially the runners who occupied Ramsey and Xhaka."

Conte’s inability to find the right formula for victory was a credit to Wenger’s surprising commitment to stifling the opposition.

It was ironic a manager known for his fidelity to the purity of attacking football parked the bus at the Bridge, a Stadium where Wenger’s nemesis, Jose Mourinho, first made the phrase fashionable during his original spell with Chelsea.

It was also easy to see the fingerprints of Wenger’s assistant manager Steve Bould on this gameplan. Bould made his name playing in the famously stingy Arsenal defence under manager George Graham.

A proud purveyor of pragmatism, Graham would often go to a 5-4-1 shape for tough away matches.

It’s not usually something Wenger does. But he may have found the blueprint for ending his side’s miserable run away to the top six. Arsenal still haven’t won one of these fixtures in over two years, per Sky Sports Statto.

They didn’t beat Chelsea, but the Gunners did find a way of playing able to get them through these away fixtures without any more 4-0 humblings.